FirstDay

Driving, the two of us, I glance in the rear-view mirror to see Caroline’s still-baby face reflected in a suspended rectangle against the cars ahead. Her large mahogany eyes gaze out the side window along Wisconsin Avenue. I scan sideways to see white barrettes clasping dark curls, then down to glimpse her bubble gum pink dress as Raffi’s gentle voice fills our quiet car. The fifteen-minute drive to Caroline’s new preschool, Gan Hayeled, is taking a little longer this morning, but that’s on purpose. In the parking lot, finally, I climb into the back seat to unbuckle Caroline’s car seat. We are here.We hold hands and enter a crowded hallway echoing with warm hellos and a steady buzz emanating from the classrooms lining the hall. We peer through the Butterfly Class door to find a colorful room divided into inviting areas.We see tables that come up to my knees, twelve tiny chairs, and an art station with bushy paintbrushes and canary yellow paint. Lining the back wall is a row of cubbies, each with a child’s photo. A few children play on their own, while another parent-child couple enters behind us. “Hello, Caroline!” greets Susan, her crouching teacher, meeting my daughter’s eyes, then mine. Silence. I take Caroline to her cubby where she puts down her bag and heads straight for the easel.After a few bright strokes, a mound of kelly green play dough catches her focus. She pulls up a chair, sits down with a rolling pin and yanks off a piece as I watch. I remember reading in Touchpoints by T. Berry Brazelton: Quietly tell your child that you are going to leave, but that you’ll be back to pick her up. Say a quick goodbye. And go.I kneel down.“I have to go now. I will see you later,“ I assert.“See ya,” my two-year-old says, softly, nonchalantly, not even looking up from her green dough. A little stunned, I stand and leave the classroom. The door shuts quietly behind me. To my right, a little girl clings to her mother with puffy wet eyes. I stand on one side of the door, my baby on the other.“So how was your summer?” an acquaintance asks. I gesture with a flat palm that I need second, as chatty relieved mothers begin peeling away from their children’s classroom doors. Did I hear Caroline right? She had murmured, “See ya!” so softly. I peer back through a one-way window in the door. Caroline is happily making green play dough stars, so I join the other parents in a lounge down the hall.“She’s concentrating on playing with sand,” a seasoned mother, serving as a runner between the classroom and the new moms, reassures me. I fill a paper plate with grapes and a powdered donut, pour coffee, and sit next to someone I don’t know. Balancing my breakfast on my lap and talking mindlessly, the warm cup is soothing in my hand. After a while, the runner announces that our children will soon pass by, insisting that we hide behind a folding screen. How hilarious to hide from our children, I think, yet there we are.Some kneeling, others on tiptoe, we huddle as if we are in a Marx Brothers movie peeking through a forbidden keyhole. I laugh aloud covering my mouth as I watch. Caroline appears last in line, jumping straight ahead, as the rest of her group walks to the right.Of course, I resist the instinct to steer her back in line. Susan pivots my daughter’s tiny frame in the right direction. Caroline probably never even noticed her class marching off without her.Behind the screen, I think about saying good-bye to my own mother on my first days of school. I was the screaming child sitting outside the classroom door at nursery school. In kindergarten, I sat nervously in the back seat as we drove down a sloping hill to the elementary school parking lot. We hugged good-bye for my first day of junior high at the bus stop; of high school, at the kitchen door; and, of college, with a tearful embrace in my dorm room. I think about how calm she made me feel as she kissed me, turned me about-face, and sent me through a door. I had never considered what it was like for her, only when I would see her next. But she must have been as anxious as I was today, adjusting to her changing daughter. When it is time to pick up Caroline, I return to the classroom to find a compact line of toddlers sitting against the hallway wall. The class fits beneath a single bulletin board. At first Caroline doesn’t see me and I will always cherish the enduring image of my daughter with her slender knees tucked to her chest next to her teacher. She has a new school bag, hunter green with her initials. Exhausted eyes dominate her face as she stares straight ahead; her small pink mouth puckers slightly while she waits.In that instant, and in the ones earlier that day, when I saw Caroline and she didn’t see me, I glimpsed her in her own world, without me. And she was okay, a little bewildered, but okay. This is really all a mother needs to know. I kneel down. Caroline is looking so hard in front of her that she doesn’t see me come up from her side.“Hi Sweetie,” I say. She turns towards my voice and her eyes catch mine, opening warmly. She beams. “Mommy! I’m so glad you came,” she says. “You found me. I found you.”She throws her arms around me. We hug there on the floor outside her classroom door, oblivious to the crowded hallway filled with similar reunions. Happy to be reunited, relieved that it went so well for the two hours that we were apart, I carry Caroline back to my car and we hold on tight to each other.

This essay was written fifteen years ago. Today (8/31/15), Caroline attended the first day of her senior year in high school.I am posting it in honor of this.